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Instagram Reels Insights: Everything You Need to Know

Instagram have just released Reels Insights, and we are here to give you the low-down on how to view, use and apply them to your strategy.

Posted 3 years ago

Written by

Julia Cohen

Posted 3 years ago

If you stay in the loop on all things social media, you’ll know that Instagram Reels Insights were recently rolled out – something that we had all most definitely been waiting for!

Having access to Instagram Insights for Reels is a total game-changer because it means that you can now start to understand a little bit more about how your content is performing, and what is influencing whether or not your Reels go viral.

So, as knowledgeable Insta-experts here at Flick, we’ve put together this article to walk you through everything you need to know about Reels Insights, including:

Jump to a section ✨

What Are Instagram Reels Insights?
Why Track & Analyze Reels Insights?
How To View Instagram Reels Insights
How To Fix Reels Insights Not Showing
Reels Insights Analytics
How To Leverage Insights To Make Better Reels
Tracking Instagram Insights With Flick
Grow Your Instagram By Monitoring Insights

What Are Instagram Reels Insights?

Reels Insights are a new analytics section of Instagram that makes the metrics relating to your Reels visible. Before they were rolled out, you were only really able to see your view count, comments, and likes by tapping on your content. However, since May 2021, Instagram now includes a dedicated tab for Reels analytics, similar to the Insights tab on your static posts and videos.

Instagram Reels Insights allow you to track, collect, and analyze data to understand the performance of your Reels and learn more about your audience and their actions on the app.

Just like the rest of Instagram’s analytics suite, if you’re posting Reels (which you should be!), you should be leveraging their Insights to inform your content strategy and create Reels that will drive better engagement and increase your following.

Why Track & Analyze Reels Insights?

Being a new feature, Instagram currently seems to be rewarding those accounts that post Reels with higher visibility. As not everyone is using them yet, Reels have less competition to rank, so they’re a great opportunity to grow your Instagram. By monitoring how well your Reels are doing, you can:

Learn what you’re doing well
Learn where you can improve
Find opportunities you’re missing
Identify what your audience likes and dislikes
Pinpoint when your audience is active and when should post your Reels for best reach and engagement
Understand which calls to action are most popular with your audience
See which AR filters, effects, and audio tracks are working
Recognize patterns in high-performing Reels

How To View Instagram Reels Insights

First of all, remember that you need to have a Creator or Business account to view Instagram Insights. It’s free to upgrade your Personal account to a professional one and only takes a few minutes to change in your settings. So it’s worth doing if you want to learn more about what’s driving the success of your Reels and other content.

There are a few different ways to view Instagram Reels Insights:

Navigate to an individual Reel and tap ‘View Insights’ which should show on your screen when previewing from your feed. Or, click into a full Reel, tap the three dots icon, and select ‘View Insights’ from the options list. This will take you to the analytics for that particular Reel.

Alternatively, head to your account and click the Insights button below your bio, or click the three lines icon in the top-right corner and select Insights on the list. Accessing Insights via your profile will provide you with data about the performance of all your content, including Reels, over the past 30 days.

How To Fix Reels Insights Not Showing

Firstly, Insights is only available on the Instagram app, so make sure you’re not accessing your account on your web browser.

Remember that you won’t be able to see Insights for past posts if you recently switched back to a Creator or Business profile from a Personal account, as your past data gets deleted when you have a Personal account.

It’s also worth noting that due to privacy rules in Europe and Japan, certain Insights metrics may not be available for content in those areas.

Reels Insights Analytics

Once you’ve accessed your Reels Insights, you’ll see the metrics (Plays, Accounts Reached, Likes, Comments, Saves, and Shares) are split into two sections: Discovery and Interactions. Both are important to understand how well your content is performing.

Reels Discovery: Accounts Reached VS Plays

Discovery on Reels Insights is similar to Reach and Impressions on a regular post, and indicates the number of accounts you’ve reached and how many times your video has been played. But what are the differences between Accounts Reached and Plays?

Accounts Reached: this metric tells you how many unique Instagram users saw your Reel at least once. If it’s way higher than your usual content, this could be a sign that your Reel has been featured on the Instagram Explore page or in the top Reels, has ranked for a hashtag, or has otherwise gone viral. That shows you’re doing something right!

Alternatively, if it’s much lower than normal, it could be a sign that you’ve posted at the wrong time, or perhaps even used a banned hashtag, which has caused your content to be hidden by Instagram.

Plays: this is the number of times your Reel has been played. It could be higher than the number of accounts reached, since some users may watch your Reel more than once. That’s a good sign that they really like your content.

Reels Interactions meaning

Interactions show how many people are engaging with your Reels. They’re broken down into the number of Likes, Comments, Shares, and Saves.

Before Reels Insights was rolled out, you could already view most of these metrics, but Instagram has now given the option to see how many times people save or share your Reels as well (depending on where you’re located, due to privacy regulations).

Understanding how many times your video is saved and shared, in comparison to other Reels you make, can help you decipher whether people want to come back to your videos at a later time and/or share them with their friends.

As a rule, high numbers of likes, shares, and saves are a sign of positive engagement on your Reels. But when it comes to comments, you need to check the content of that feedback. The newfound adage may claim that “all publicity is good publicity” and Instagram may reward high numbers of comments with greater visibility.

However, if you’re receiving negative comments on your Reels, you should take action on what your audience is saying, whether it’s about your content or your brand as a whole, rather than skimming over it as a simple engagement metric.

Instagram Insights Reach

Finally, you can also access more holistic Insights for Instagram Reels in the Overview Analytics section of your account.

By navigating to the Reach section of your Instagram Insights, you can see the number of followers and non-followers you have reached, and how this compares to the reach of your other content types.

You’ll also be able to view the top-performing Reels you’ve posted within the last 7 or 30 days. Use this data to inform your content strategy and create the types of Reels that have proven to be popular with your audience.

How To Leverage Insights To Make Better Reels

Once you start monitoring and analyzing your Instagram Reels Insights, don’t be disheartened if you’re not getting actionable data instantly. This is a new form of content, and with fewer accounts publishing it, it can take longer for a Reel to go viral. You may notice a boost in Discovery or Interaction metrics after a few days or potentially up to two weeks!

Plus, once a Reel goes viral, its reach and impressions will stay sky-high for a good few days. This is an amazing opportunity for you to continue posting regular content and stories to capitalize on your newfound popularity and see what your new followers like.

So make sure to keep an eye on your Insights and incorporate them into your regular social media reports to track performance over time. Then, when you’ve gathered enough data, you should try testing different variations on your Reels to measure the impact on your Insights. Check out how other creators and businesses are posting on Reels and consider trialing:

Different lengths of Reel: you can now post videos of up to 1 minute, so see if your audience prefers shorter, TikTok-style clips or longer videos
Posting on different days and times: Instagram Insights shows when your audience is most active, so test posting Reels during those key hours to see which garners the most engagement
Varying audio tracks: identify which music or audio you’ve used in your top-performing Reels and trial it on new content to see if it is equally popular
Different Reels content styles: like with audio, see what content, filters, and effects are proving most popular in terms of engagement and create more of the same to see if that’s what’s driving the posts’ success. Try using the new Reels Remix feature to repurpose your old content too!

Tracking Instagram Insights With Flick

Now that Instagram has a dedicated Reels Insights section, it suggests that API access to the analytics is on the horizon. This will mean that platforms like Flick will hopefully soon be able to include detailed Reels Insights in our Analytics Suite.

Already, our advanced Instagram analytics provide in-depth insight into engagement and conversion rates across your feed, story, and Reels posts. Unlike Insights on the Instagram app itself, you don’t lose your data after 30 days. With Flick’s Analytics Suite, you can:

Access metrics including engagement rates, reach, profile visits, followers, and website clicks over any time period
Track your hashtag performance and see which terms your posts have ranked for and for how long to improve your hashtag research
Calculate the top times for posting content on your account based on where your audience is located and when they’re most active
Visually review and compare your posts, as well as comparing them against a benchmark of 55k+ Instagram accounts

Grow Your Instagram By Monitoring Insights

Tracking and analyzing your Instagram Reels Insights should be a key part of your regular social media strategy. By identifying which content is performing best in terms of reach and engagement, you can create more of the same and watch your account grow.

Got any questions about the new Insights for Instagram Reels? Send us a DM or take a look at our Instagram Analytics guide to learn more about Insights for your full Instagram account. If you haven’t yet started to use our new IGTV and Story Analytics, just click below to explore them further!